I’m with you cvbritton.
I can think of reasons I wouldn’t want my lights on ALL the time; I’ve tried to think of a situation where I wouldn’t want them on when the wipers were going and came up empty. (Maybe, just maybe, I’d want to be able to run “parking only” in a whiteout-intensity blizzard.)
That situation is easily remedied on some vehicles. Power window relays can easily be jumped with no ill effects.
“Also, traction control is a crutch for those who never learned how to drive on snow/dirt.”
Even for the most experienced winter driver, it is well worth it to have traction/stability control. Unexpected maneuvers on ice and snow, regardless of your skill, can NEVER approach the advantages of these electronic aids. Can they become a crutch ? Sure, because no traction/stability aid can ever compensate completely for stupidity.
No, the technology won’t compensate for stupidity. Nor will it ever equal good judgement of an experienced driver in avoiding difficulty in the first place.
All new cars need a steering wheel that, when it detects the absence of two hands on the wheel for more than 15 seconds, dope slaps the driver and then reports to the insurance company. We need to eliminate the monkey driver: one paw resting on top of the wheel, the other scratching the outside of the door. Tom and Ray exempted. A wheel a stick and three pedals is nirvana for the real driver.
I’m actually more comfortable with my left arm resting on the door, hand on the steering wheel and right arm on the center arm rest, for most daily driving. When the situation calls for it, I’ll use both hands, but not very often
Feature 1) Stability control. There is no way you can possibly tell me that the only reason this can be helpful is poor driving skills. I don’t know where you drive, but here in Maryland, nobody can drive for crap, and I find myself forced to take evasive maneuvers OFTEN. I have personally been involved in 3, yes THREE accidents this year, all witnessed by police, all deemed to be the fault of the other driver. I have also dealt with numerous close calls, some of which have required such drastic maneuvers as to nearly cause me to spin out in my technologically unadvanced 2001 Saturn SL. The people around me cause the need for me to have better safety devices. Not my lack of driving skill.
Feature 2) I’ll give you that it is largely something that shouldn’t be needed, but failing a much better enforcement of unsexy traffic laws, there’s nothing else happening to make assholes tailgate less. It’s a fact of life, and it’s the cause of another stupid accident I was in while driving in Maryland. Stopping responsibly for a light, and I get rear ended by some jackass busy texting his girlfriend. This feature in his car might have prevented this from happening.
Feature 3) Blind Spot Monitoring. Here’s another one I could have used, maybe, though the idiot who hit me may have hit me anyway, I might have stopped making my legal left turn just before she drove straight by me on the left side completely destroying the right side of her car and making me late for work.
Feature 7) Sleepy and Distracted Driver Alerts. Perhaps you have the ability to be alert no matter what. Maybe you don’t have a job where you work 12-14 hours 5 days a week and have to commute an hour each way because it’s the only thing you can find right now that can support your family. Maybe you even have a situation where you can just not drive if you’re tired, because you don’t have to get home in order to get your kids to school so your wife can go to college at 6 in the morning to try to make a better life for the family. Maybe, just maybe, some of us aren’t so lucky. I should point out that none of the accidents that I have been involved in have been related to this phenomenon, all occurred midday, wide awake, but I have had nights where I have no idea how I got home, and frankly, that scares the piss out of me, because I don’t have a feasible choice in the matter. I will concede the point of distraction is something that people SHOULD work on themselves, but likely never will, but the point remains that tired driving often is NOT a choice, and should not be regarded as such.
Besides, who do you trust more to take action on this, a bunch of people who can’t even be assed to follow the simplest of traffic laws, like treating a dark light as a stop, and no turn on red to actually FOCUS on driving well, or the several car companies who do business in the US and face losses of billions of dollars yearly for not complying with something that can help to make the roads a little safer despite the morons we are forced to share the roads with? I, for one, know which one I’ll be voting for. Greed can do a lot of bad things, but it’s a hell of a motivational force for good when the greater good forces it to be.
Difficulty isn’t always something that can be anticipated. No matter what you argue, there’s always a deer by the side of the road, watching, waiting for the car that’s going to hit it. For those who drive strictly in urban areas, replace the word “deer” with “jackass.”
Yet, the Europeans seem to have their fair share of accidents in spite of their tougher licensing requirements.
Advanced car handling skills taught to someone who is common sense challenged merely allows him or her to lose control of the car at higher speeds than previously possible.
I suspect That all the new fancy display screens, and other useless gadgets that do nothing but distract the driver from actually paying attention to driving cancels out all the mandatory safety equipment.
Comparing similar environments such a freeway driving, Western Europe has ONE HALF the rate of highway fatalities that the US has. Because of extreme crowding and bicycle traffic there are of course also many city accidents, although the rate does not exceed that of the US.
I would be very interested in seeing the statistics on avoiding mishaps with high technology compared to good judgement. Surely some insurance company has done the math.
According to who’s definition of highway fatality? For example, in the U.S., a non fatal heart attack that leads to a fatal traffic accident is listed as a traffic fatality. If you die within 30 days of your accident from complications of your injuries, your death is listed as a traffic fatality. The standard used to be one year and there was a rather significant drop in highway fatalities when the standard was reduced to 30 days.
Before 2005, you had to die within 8 days of your accident for it to count as a highway fatality in France. Now it’s 30 days. I’m not sure what the standard is for other European countries.
You need to get some facts straight. Earnhardt wasn’t the biggest opponent of the HANS device. Tony Stewart was. Furthermore the HANS device wasn’t even a widely discussed topic until after the death of Earnhardt. There was some mentions of it following the deaths of Adam Petty and Kenny Irwin, but it didn?t’ become a really hot topic until Earnhardt’s death, which was in 2001 not 2003.
As for the costs you’re forgetting one minor issue, alot of these devices can be proprietary which means there’s going far less competition, and therefore the prices won’t fall nearly as much as they do with consumer electronics.
When airbags were installed in cars the insurance rate WENT UP for the same models. The rationale was that only a minority of the collisions are such that the air bag would provide useful protection, but the majority of collisions are severe enough to set off the air bags, resulting in a $3000-$4000 repair bil on top of the body damage.
Those frontal collisisons are nearly all avoidable by paying attention and driving sanely.
During the last severe snow storm, nearly all the cars in the ditch were HI TECH, 4 wheel drive vehicles selling for almost twice as much as econoboxes.
Accident investigators, and I have a number amongst my friends, will tell you that 85% of vehicle accidents are avoidable “driver error”, the rest are a combination of poor vehicle maintenance, road conditions, acts of god (tornados, flash floods, etc), and a miniscule amount due to actual design weakneses in the car. Fifty years ago the car was actually one of the culprits, causing Ralph Nader to write his landmark book “Unsafe at Any Speed”.
I would like to see four things:
Here is a very simple one in the name of safety - simply have the lights turn on when you turn on your windshield wipers, maybe with a manual override, but turning on would be the default position. A good percentage I see of cars driving in the rain don’t have their lights on and when the car is black or another dark color, it’s even more dangerous.
Driving is akin to combat in the respect that an accident can occur to ANYONE, unexpectedly and regardless of their precautions or good intentions. Both good judgment and all the electronic safety help you can get are worthwhile.
Before everyone starts screaming GOVERNMENT mandated safety devices…I’ll point out that not 1 or some of device safety devices…but EVERY single one of all mandated safety devices were lobbied very very hard by the insurance industry. The insurance industry is the MAIN force behind ALL mandated automotive safety devices. The insurance industry has spent MILLIONS lobbying congress for safety features as seat-belts, air-bags, crash crumple zones, 5mph bumpers.
And their lobbying doesn’t stop at just automotive either…You can look at almost every single electrical code ever written and trace it back to the insurance industry…same for pretty much all building codes too.
To me, the most ridiculous feature on the list was blind spot monitoring, a feature designed for the people who do not bother to adjust their outside mirrors (fortunately, I am not one of them). I just could not believe they could suggest that feature should be required. With all the technology being introduced today, it might be a good time to be like Tom and get used vehicles that are old (at least five years or so) in order to avoid mandated safety equipment, some of which to me belong on the convenience/luxury options list .